


still, the hands

by theseourbodies



Category: Numb3rs (TV)
Genre: Charlie maybe challenges god, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e20 The Fifth Man, Gen, especially when no one dies, grief is complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21776422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: Episode tag,The Fifth ManSome bastard, some outright villain, some criminal with a knife almost takes Charlie's brother away from him, and for a while Charlie feels a little like he's losing his mind.
Relationships: Charlie Eppes & Don Eppes
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	still, the hands

Some bastard, some outright villain, some criminal with a _knife_ almost takes Charlie's brother away from him, and for a while Charlie feels a little like he's losing his mind. 

Cancer is a thing, a physical condition that doctors and researchers can see and test and create hypotheses about, but you can't fight a cluster of cells. A man with a knife is different-- that's a person, with all the usual soft places that could be hurt and blood that could flow and a brain that could be terrified. But to Charlie, there may as well be no difference at all. He's not his brother or his brother's team. A malignant tumor, an attempted murderer, these things are essentially the same for all that Charlie can do about either of them and their effect on his family-- on what _remains_ of his family. All he’s left with is the fallout. 

At least a man, a human being, can be caught. At least Charlie isn’t just left with his hands and his grief in the aftermath all over again. There’s still work to be done, work that only Charlie can do and that only Charlie should do. Nikki, who is suddenly and agonizingly young to him, looks at all of them in the hospital with hunted, haunted eyes, but Charlie isn’t going to let her take the blame for this off his shoulders. He knows that she wants to, but he also thinks that every person who has ever worked with Don has to learn: there’s always a risk that Don Eppes will go down while looking out for them. Megan Reeves, just drunk enough during a night out with the team to be honest about the things that she knew, had once told him that. Charlie had loved her all the more for it, for another thing that he could say he knew about Don; but he had also been stuck with that knowledge from then on. He’d never been able to forget the things that he had learned, no matter how much he might have wanted to. 

In the achingly bright hallway in the hospital his mother had died in, their dad lays his hands on Charlie like a blessing before sending him off. Amita kisses his cheek, his mouth, the palm of the hand held fitfully between both of hers and stays with him as Charlie finally goes to work. 

It takes a hard sell to get David to let Charlie be the one to spring the trap that they set. He’s trying not to compare them, Don and David, because there’s really no comparing apples and oranges. David is David, and Charlie can talk to David the boss like he can't talk to Don the boss. It’s not a bad thing; David the boss can be reasoned with when it comes to Charlie, and Charlie’s always been a steady head in a debate— arguments with Don being the only exception to that rule. David eventually says yes, yes, set the trap; you’re the bait. Charlie isn’t usually the man doing these kinds of things, but he thinks it’s only right—he was the one who sent Don out that night, so it’s only right that Charlie’s the one to go out now. He sets his trap for their man, this _cartoon criminal_ with his scraggling scar and his dead eyes, and he feels a savage, overwhelming satisfaction when he sees the man realize just who has come for him, and why. It’s worth the sleepless nights to see that sick look of defeat in this evil man’s eye and to spill something precious to him like he had spilled something precious to Charlie. Diamonds and his brother’s blood-- It’s all very old testament, eye for an eye. He thinks Don would like it, but he’s not sure. He never seems to know anything about Don or what Don would like unless someone tells him. 

The first finger of Don's left hand has been broken before. Charlie only knows this because Larry had told him that that's what a finger looks like when it’s been broken and then set. Don had never offered to tell the story, and Charlie had never asked him about it; but then, at the time he hadn’t asked Larry how the hell he knew what a formerly-broken finger looked like, either. This information is essentially useless, and he understands that, but he lets himself think it over obsessively for a little while anyway, his mind gnawing at all the angles of the memory of the finger Don had previously broken. Don’s still and pale and laid out like he’s already waiting for a shroud; Charlie doesn’t deserve it, but his mind needs something else to focus on when all he can do is sit and sit and wait for his brother to come back to him after the work is done. 

Charlie finds that he wants to locate the incident in time and in space, but he'd never asked any questions about it. He kept trying to determine a Before Break and After Break, but all he comes up with Before Charlie Knew and After Charlie Knew. It's a frustratingly familiar situation, when it comes to Don and what Charlie knows about him. Maybe their dad would know, but Charlie thinks that that's something he really doesn't want to determine right now. Their dad visibly hesitates sometimes, when Charlie comes to him with questions; Charlie always thinks that he’s trying to determine if Don hadn't told Charlie whatever it was because it was a secret or if it just hadn't come up. Or, more likely, if it just hadn't occurred to Don that Charlie might just like to know some things. Things like: how Don broke that finger on his non-dominant hand; what it had been like to go through the Academy, so far from California; what it had felt like when Don had proposed and almost gotten married to Kim. 

(Vaguely, like it was maybe a dream, Charlie sometimes remembers the Friday of his first week of classes at Princeton. The most concrete part of the memory is always Don's voice on the phone after Charlie had dialed his number with shaking hands. Don, groggy, or maybe a little drunk, asking quiet questions about what the classes were like, whether he had met any people he liked, whatever he thought Charlie wanted to talk about. And Charlie had answered him until he'd started to droop, had hung up after saying good bye with a smile, still absolutely ignorant about why his brother had sounded tired or buzzed or both. It's a good memory, most of the time; usually Charlie can convince himself that Don wouldn't have really told him anything, even if Charlie had asked.) 

They get their bad guy; Charlie takes news of his successful revenge back to his brother. 

Charlie says to Don: You were always the one who used to protect me. 

Don says back: I never wanted this life for you. 

Charlie doesn’t need anyone to tell him that he and his brother are having two different conversations with one another, where they are both repenting for the wrong things. But Charlie knows what he’s saying without words, what he’s been saying since the first time he realized that there are no certainties when it’s his family on the line. He doesn’t believe in a higher power than the inevitability of the universe really; he’s not like Don or their dad. He still can’t escape the fact that this isn’t the first time that he’s been wrong; Don carries the small scar of the first just above his left elbow, and now he’ll carry the mark of this mistake, too. It feels wrong, that Don should be the one carrying the marks like he’s always seemed to carry everything for Charlie and their family. It feels wrong, like a punishment for both of them when it was Charlie that was wrong in the first place. 

He wishes he had the same vocabulary of faith that Don has; maybe then he could explain all this to Don in a way that made sense. For now, he’s just left with what he means hanging in the air between them like a challenge or a blessing: I’ll be the one the protect you. I’ll do what I was mean to do, what I fought to come back for. He hopes some god is listening; he knows the universe will keep the declaration like it keeps everything—perpetually, if not constantly. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title adapted from "Boot Theory," by Richard Siken (I promise you, I _swear_ that i read other poets, I just don't rip lines from their poetry off nearly as often):
> 
> _A man takes his sadness down to the driver and throws it in the river  
>  but then he’s still left  
>  with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away  
>  but then he’s still left with his hands._


End file.
